Photo by Moe Doiron/The Globe and Mail
Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews says the province has no immediate plans to put Suboxone on the Ontario Drug Benefit, which would make it more readily available to treat addicts who can’t get methadone, a more common treatment for opioid addiction. Health-care practitioners, especially in remote areas, want to use Suboxone more in cases where there are simply no licensed methadone doctors around, or no spaces available. Buprenorphine, the active ingredient in Suboxone, is supposed to be safer and easier for others (nurses, for example) to give out. It’s also really expensive.
Photo by Henry Romero/Reuters
April 3, 2012 – Globe and Mail
ANNA MEHLER PAPERNY
There are still serious shortcomings in the way public-health bodies communicate with physicians, nurses and pharmacists on the front lines of a pandemic, says the Public Health Agency of Canada.
And almost three years after a flu pandemic put the country on high alert, the federal agency has put out a call for a new strategy to improve communication with clinicians during pandemic response.
Anna Mehler Paperny
Monday, August 17, 2009 – Globe and Mail
Billions of dollars have been pledged to develop Canada’s North, but in much of Nunavut, the most basic needs remain unaddressed, leaving the territory with ‘stone-age’ infrastructure
When Prime Minister Stephen Harper visits Pangnirtung, Nunavut, later this week, he’s sure to get a warm greeting. After all, his government is contributing $25-million to the 1,300-person community to build a new small-craft harbour aimed at bolstering the local fishing industry.
The harbour, whose designation as a “priority project” in the federal budget in January came as a welcome surprise for Pangnirtung, is an important plank in the Harper government’s commitment to building much-needed infrastructure in Nunavut.
But Monday, the Prime Minister arrives in Iqaluit, where the welcome may be a little cooler. There has so far been no infrastructure money to replace a gravel wharf in the 7,000-person territorial capital, where it takes up to a week for the most basic goods to be offloaded from boats bringing them in – “stone-age” infrastructure, as the territory’s transportation planning director calls it.
